Smirnoff A Good Shot Of Laughs

Laughter is said to be medicine with the ability to cure the ailments of the world.

Yakov Smirnoff, with his To Russia With Laughs show, may not be able to cure the world, but he at least makes us laugh at it for a night.

Smirnoff is a small bearded man. The emigre comic still has a strong accent and looks familiar. He has appeared in beer commercials and the television sitcom Night Court.

He comes from a serious country, he quips, where if you were Henny Youngman and said ``take my wife, please,`` you could be pretty certain of coming home to an empty house.

Television in the Soviet Union, he says, consists of two channels. Channel 1 is propaganda and Channel 2 has someone from the KGB telling you to turn back to Channel 1.

In Russia, an ``all you can eat buffet`` is someone giving you a piece of bread and saying that is ``all you can eat.``

Smirnoff`s humor basically capitalizes on Russian stereotypes and the plight of an alien struggling with the English language.

We laugh at him as he laughs at himself and his Russian upbringing. Much of his act consists of humorously answering questions from the audience.

Smirnoff delivers with tongue-in-cheek humor. He is at once adorable and vulnerable, allowing us to laugh at political distances and differences.

We are the good guys and we like that, identify with it and feel positive about his being smart enough to become one of us.

``Did you defect?`` a voice from the audience calls out. ``No,`` he says, ``I was asked to leave.``

The entire show lasted a little more than two hours. The time spent was thoroughly enjoyable. We will hear more from Smirnoff. You can bet on that.

Reunion, a group of everyday citizens who won a local talent search, opened the show. Their music brings back the days of the `50s and rock `n` roll. The group harmonizes well but sometimes falters when singing falsetto.

Next came Larry Miller, a talented comedian whom I recalled playing the Comic Strip in Fort Lauderdale about three years ago.

Miller is a contemporary humorist, a man who allows us to poke fun at ourselves and our world. He jokes about the new fad of having phones in automobiles. The next step, he predicts, will be answering machines in the car.

It is not just what he says but how he says it that makes his humor successful. His expressions, gestures and inflection give his performance impact.